Adam Himmelsbach | Landing Sugar Bowl game tops off a big highlight reel for Louisville football and its fans

Landing Sugar Bowl game tops off a big highlight reel for Louisville and its fans

Dec. 2, 2012

Written by

Adam Himmelsbach

Please, Louisville fans, stop worrying. Your team is headed to the Sugar Bowl to face Florida, your coach is still here and your program has found a long-term home.

So take a deep breath, play some Frank Sinatra music and put on those fuzzy Cardinals socks your aunt bought you for your birthday. I’m here to tell you that everything is going to fine. Better than fine, really.

Look, I know the past month was a whirlwind. You saw a perfect season waylaid by losses to Syracuse and Connecticut. You wondered, amid the conference realignment merry-go-round, if you would forever be sitting at the kids’ table.

You watched your star sophomore quarterback break a bone in his wrist. You fretted about coach Charlie Strong possibly taking a new job, and you deconstructed his comments about schools he may or may not have talked to. And it all just gave you anxiety.

I even saw Cardinals fans slump their shoulders and sigh because they thought their team was going to the Orange Bowl rather than the Sugar Bowl. They argued that they’d already been to the Orange Bowl and wanted something new. Yes, playing mighty Florida State in South Beach on New Year’s Day would have been just miserable.

(You want some real “Been there, done that?” Pittsburgh is headed to its third consecutive BBVA Compass Bowl. At least they won’t need the compass to find their way.)

To quote the esteemed poet Ferris Bueller: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

The same holds true for this season, which, despite a few hiccups, has been one of the most memorable seasons in U of L history. You have Teddy Bridgewater, the quarterback with the big arm and loads of moxie who will enter next season as a Heisman Trophy contender.

You have Strong, one of the hottest names in coaching. Yes, it’s inevitable that other schools will court him, and there is a good chance some already have. But would you rather have a losing coach who made you pinch your nose as if he had stepped in something? If Strong leaves, it will hurt. But every coach leaves at some point.

But right now, Strong is still here and Bridgewater is still here, and the hope and possibility that will come from joining the Atlantic Coast Conference is looming. And, lest we forget, your team is headed to the gosh-darn Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.

(By the way, the bowl is sponsored by Allstate, which requires little untangling when attached to the game. The Allstate Sugar Bowl. When I was a kid, it was the USF&G Sugar Bowl, which always confused me, because what kid knows what USF&G means?)

Anyway, it’s a big-time bowl game in a big-time city against a big-time program, and that should be plenty to put aside concerns about the past and the future.

So enjoy these next few weeks. Maybe send a holiday card to Northern Illinois, which improbably qualified for the Orange Bowl, thus bumping the Cardinals to Bourbon Street. Enjoy the hype and the hope, and don’t forget to pack your fuzzy socks.